Syrian Hmong

[Dill]

Much appreciate the reliable, loyal Kurds and all the help over two decades of fighting Saddam and then snuffing ISIS.

Best of luck now in your conflict with Turkey.

Trump Abandons the Syrian Kurds
The move to withdraw American troops from the border goes against the advice of senior defense officials.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/07/trump-abandons-the-syrian-kurds/

Trump Endorses Turkish Military Operation

The White House on Sunday endorsed a Turkish military operation into northern Syria and indicated U.S. troops would withdraw from the area after a phone call between President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart, an abrupt shift in policy that would leave Syrian Kurds, U.S. partners, at the mercy of Ankara.

Defying advice. The move goes against the recommendations of top defense and military officials, who have sought to keep a small U.S. presence in northeast Syria to continue the operation against the Islamic State and reassure the Kurds that Turkey will not launch an invasion. Ankara considers the Kurdish fighters to be a terrorist insurgency and has long condemned American support to the group.

“Turkey has just overturned two years of effort to defeat ISIS, an effort they did nothing to assist with,” said one senior administration official who requested anonymity. “The entire DOD leadership was opposed.”

Pentagon caught off guard. Just last week, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters the U.S. and Turkish militaries were making progress setting up a security mechanism on the border, continuing joint patrols that began last month. The Kurds have kept their side of the bargain, moving fighters and equipment out of the immediate area and refraining from launching attacks across the border, officials said.

PS While Turkey moves against you, please don't free those 10,000 ISIS prisoners under your control.

[Dill]

Apparently the surprise move followed a phone call with Erdogan, after which Trump abruptly decided on the recall without consultation with his NSC or the Pentagon or anyone for that matter.


U.S. Retreat Opens Door for Turkish Incursion in Syria

At 6:30 am local time Monday, U.S. troops withdrew from their observation posts in northern Syria after a late night call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey has long been planning an incursion into northern Syria to push out Syrian Kurdish groups that Ankara regards as terrorists; Erdogan also hopes to create a so-called safe zone in the area in order to repatriate some of the millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

But the Kurdish fighters Erdogan wants to force out of the area have been key U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State—a fact that they are keen to point out. The U.S. move leaves the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) exposed to a Turkish onslaught, which Erdogan says could come as soon as today.

What does Turkey want? “Our aim is, I underline it, to shower east of the Euphrates with peace,” Erdogan declared. His advisor Ibrahim Kalin was more specific on Twitter. “The safe zone plan has two purposes, to secure our borders by eliminating terror elements and to ensure the safe return of refugees.” Turkey is facing growing domestic pressure to deal with the millions of Syrian refugees in the country. Though they were initially welcomed, public sentiment has begun to turn against them, as Selim Sazak has reported in FP.

According to Sinan Ulgen, the chairman of the Istanbul-based EDAM think tank and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, Trump’s move will force Syrian Kurds to make a “more realistic assessment of the sustainability of U.S. support given the position of Turkey, a NATO ally. Washington had always told Ankara … that U.S. support to the PYD was tactical in nature. Now Trump’s decision proves this point,” Ulgen wrote in an email to FP.

Did Trump defy experts at the Pentagon and State Department? The issue of U.S. troops in Syria has divided the Trump administration for years. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis stepped down in the wake of Trump’s announcement of a full withdrawal of 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria in late 2018. Soon after Mattis resigned, Brett McGurk, a special presidential envoy focused on the Islamic State, followed in his footsteps. After their departures, U.S. officials sought to keep some forces in northern Syria.

McGurk is just as critical of Trump today. Speaking to the New York Times after news of the Trump-Erdogan call broke, he argued “This looks to be another reckless decision made without deliberation or consultation following a call with a foreign leader.” It could also lead to further instability in his view. “The White House statement bears no relation to facts on the ground,” he told the Times. “If implemented, it will significantly increase risk to our personnel, as well as hasten ISIS’s resurgence.”

More than anything, the U.S. move allows “Trump to return to his original decision of completely withdrawing from Syria,” Ulgen argued in an email to FP. “He does not see Syria as having any strategic value for the U.S. He also did not want to risk totally alienating Turkey at a time when the containment policy towards Iran has reached a critical stage. Ultimately, Trump was forced by Erdogan to choose between Turkey and the PYD,” he added. Trump, it appears, has chosen Turkey.

Will it help or harm U.S.-Turkey ties? According to Ulgen, “Trump’s decision is important to assuage the very widespread anti-Americanism in Turkey,” which has in part been driven by U.S. support for the PYD, which Turkey views as identical to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), against which it has been fighting a war for decades. While the PYD is no match for Turkey’s military, an offensive in northern Syria could, he adds, pose an “additional risk is for the PKK to re-engage in terror activities within Turkey.”

An anonymous current U.S. official took a darker view, telling the Washington Post that the Trump administration “has no idea” whether Turkey’s incursion would be minor or a major push deep into Syria territory; the latter could place prisons holding captive Islamic State fighters in danger. “There are many potential disastrous outcomes to this,” the official told the Post.

[fredtoast]

I made a thread a long time ago about how we were playing two different sides at the same time.

We used whoever we could to fight ISIS and ended up enlisting some parties that were enemies with each other.

Something like this was bound to happen eventually.

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 06:11 PM)fredtoast Wrote: I made a thread a long time ago about how we were playing two different sides at the same time.

We used whoever we could to fight ISIS and ended up enlisting some parties that were enemies with each other.

Something like this was bound to happen eventually.

Do you think the abandonment of the Kurds was/is unavoidable?


Also, a general question for anyone--how is this abandonment, if it goes forward, likely to affect foreign policy in the future? E.g., how might it affect future attempts to develop proxies and alliances in world hot spots?

Related red cap exercise: how might Putin, China or Iran view the US withdrawal from Syria?  Strengthening or weakening the US?

Do these questions matter at all to people who just want the US to disentangle itself entirely from the Middle East and/or the Far EAst?

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(10-07-2019, 06:50 PM)Dill Wrote: Do you think the abandonment of the Kurds was/is unavoidable?

As handled to this point, yes.  The US isn't going to push Turkey further into the arms of Russia on this issue.

Quote:Also, a general question for anyone--how is this abandonment, if it goes forward, likely to affect foreign policy in the future? E.g., how might it affect future attempts to develop proxies and alliances in world hot spots?

Related red cap exercise: how might Putin, China or Iran view the US withdrawal from Syria?  Strengthening or weakening the US?

Do these questions matter at all to people who just want the US to disentangle itself entirely from the Middle East and/or the Far EAst?

A good question.  It is odd that so many people who decry US interventionism also bemoan the destabilization created by a withdrawal of US forces.  Personally I really dislike this current action.  I've always been a fan of the Kurds (feel free to check my posting history) and really think we should have a created a free Kurdistan after the second Iraq war.  Sadly, that moment is past. 

[Bengalzona]

(10-07-2019, 05:58 PM)Dill Wrote: Much appreciate the reliable, loyal Kurds and all the help over two decades of fighting Saddam and then snuffing ISIS.  

Best of luck now in your conflict with Turkey.

Might want to explain who the Hmong are and their history with us, there being a few young folks in the crowd and all.

[SunsetBengal]

(10-07-2019, 05:58 PM)Dill Wrote: PS  While Turkey moves against you, please don't free those 10,000 ISIS prisoners under your control.

My question is;  Why are they holding 10K ISIS fighters captive?  Shouldn't they have been executed?

[*jason*]

(10-07-2019, 07:36 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Might want to explain who the Hmong are and their history with us, there being a few young folks in the crowd and all.

Nah... Most of us saw Gran Torino.

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 07:38 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: My question is;  Why are they holding 10K ISIS fighters captive?  Shouldn't they have been executed?

Some of them, sure. The Kurds want tribunals set up there now so proceedings against them can begin.
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/syria/17092019

But no, we should not just execute them if we want to maintain the current international system, with international law founded upon liberal premises like individual rights and right to trial.

Actually, there are 60,000 detainees in all--the wives and children etc. from over 50 different countries. Perhaps some undetermined.  Some probably will be re-patriated. Something needs to be done so that ISIS is not allowed to simply reconstitute when the US leaves.

People should remember too that ISIS is not just in Iraq, but has sizable contingents in Nigeria, Libya and A-stan.  And in the Levant conditions for its reconstitution currently obtain. The fight is a long ways from over.  The question is now do we want to recreate problems already solved or roll up our sleeves for some "nation building."

So just leaving the Kurds in charge of all those people, and then leaving the Kurds to fend for themselves against one of Trump's autocratic friends, is to invite more chaos and ISIS continuity.

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 07:43 PM)jason Wrote: Nah... Most of us saw Gran Torino.

  Saw that.  Hmong did not stand a chance against Clint. The US could have used him in Vietnam.


 These Montangards (mountain tribes) sided with the U.S. during the Vietnam War, and then were sort of abandoned afterwards.  Some were allowed to emigrate to the US though, where, as young movie viewers know, they moved in next to Korean War veterans. Others fled to Thailand and France.



But after the US thanked them for their service, most--thousands--fled to Laos, where they still live, armed and hiding with their children, hunted by the Laotian military.  Some tips for the Kurds, maybe?

http://en.rfi.fr/asia-pacific/20171204-anno-2017-vietnam-war-still-rages-secretly-laos-hmong

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 07:27 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: A good question.  It is odd that so many people who decry US interventionism also bemoan the destabilization created by a withdrawal of US forces.  Personally I really dislike this current action.  I've always been a fan of the Kurds (feel free to check my posting history) and really think we should have a created a free Kurdistan after the second Iraq war.  Sadly, that moment is past.

Traditional isolationists don't support US interventionism, and they don't care what destabilization a withdrawal may create in a place Like Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. They want the troops home, so they are logically consistent when they "decry" intervention and DON'T "bemoan" destabilization.

Interventionists don't "decry" intervention, though they may "bemoan" withdrawal.

You may be talking about Internationalists . They often "decry US interventionism" on political and humanitarian grounds. They prefer diplomacy to military action and don't want to see thousands killed and millions of lives degraded, usually for no achievable end. But once the thousands are killed and millions are living in refugee camps, they "bemoan" their abandonment on the same humanitarian grounds, and out of fear that intervention+abandonment creates larger, longer term problems.

Would be very odd, and logically inconsistent, if they didn't both "decry" and "bemoan." 

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 07:36 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Might want to explain who the Hmong are and their history with us, there being a few young folks in the crowd and all.

Non-Viet Hill tribe who fought on the US side during the Vietnam War, thereby making themselves "enemies of the state" and without allies and homeland once Saigon fell.  Very useful to the U.S.--till we moved on.


https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/world/asia/17laos.html

VIENTIANE PROVINCE, Laos — They call themselves America’s forgotten soldiers.

Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America.

“If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable of crawling nimbly through thick bamboo underbrush. “They will never forgive me. I cannot live outside the jungle because I am a former American soldier.”

In a small hillside clearing about nine miles east of the Mekong River, Mr. Yang and four other veterans scratch out a primitive existence with their wives and 50 children and grandchildren.

[Bengalzona]

(10-07-2019, 08:04 PM)Dill Wrote: But after the US thanked them for their service, most--thousands--fled to Laos, where a few who were not blown up by the millions of air-dropped land mines, unexploded bombs from the largest bombing campaign ever and who have not contracted Agent-Orange-related cancer still live, armed and hiding with their children, hunted by the Laotian military.  Some tips for the Kurds, maybe?

Hope you don't mind, but I corrected that a little for you.

[CJD]

(10-07-2019, 07:27 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: A good question.  It is odd that so many people who decry US interventionism also bemoan the destabilization created by a withdrawal of US forces.  Personally I really dislike this current action.  I've always been a fan of the Kurds (feel free to check my posting history) and really think we should have a created a free Kurdistan after the second Iraq war.  Sadly, that moment is past. 

My stance on American interventionism is, essentially, "Only intervene if there is an imminent threat to Americans as a result of not intervening (and this does not include the price of their gasoline increasing). However, once you are in there, you can't just crash a regime and then leave, as this creates terrorist organizations and/or new dictators (Whoever has the most local power or thirst for power at the time). In for a penny, in for a pound."

I think intervention is something that should be weighed EXTREMELY heavily in terms of what happens the moment you decide to do so. Destabilizing regions and then peacing out is, in my opinion, the absolute worst of the three options, assuming those three options are:
1. Stay out of it entirely.
2. Stay in forever.
3. Enter to get rid of a particular person or group and then leave and let the locals handle it however they can and hope terrorists don't take over the region.

[Bengalzona]

(10-07-2019, 07:27 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: As handled to this point, yes.  The US isn't going to push Turkey further into the arms of Russia on this issue.

Is there another issue where we would be willing to push Turkey further into the arms of Russia?

Moreover, will we cave on the next issue where Turkey threatens to cozy up to Russia if they don't get their way?

(Those are rhetorical questions, BTW.)

Personally, I have not seen Turkey as much of an ally in recent years. And I have grave concerns about their current regime and their growing Islamist movement.

Quote:A good question.  It is odd that so many people who decry US interventionism also bemoan the destabilization created by a withdrawal of US forces.  Personally I really dislike this current action.  I've always been a fan of the Kurds (feel free to check my posting history) and really think we should have a created a free Kurdistan after the second Iraq war.  Sadly, that moment is past.

I can attest that you have been pro-Kurd in the past. Bfine, also.

Personally, I think the last admin made some bad choices with regards to the whole Syria issue (I've posted about that before). I have always felt that if they had sponsored talks with the major players (Assad-regime, rebels, Kurds, Russia, Turkey and Iran... but no ISIS, you can't talk to those assholes), a lot of deaths and refugees could have been prevented. Barring that, we probably shouldn't have gotten involved at all.

But as bad as the last admin's choices were, this current action only makes it worse.

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 08:53 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: Hope you don't mind, but I corrected that a little for you.

LOL  I believe I did write that, but the auto-correct edited it out just as I posted.

Thanks 
 

[Dill]

(10-07-2019, 08:53 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: My stance on American interventionism is, essentially, "Only intervene if there is an imminent threat to Americans as a result of not intervening (and this does not include the price of their gasoline increasing). However, once you are in there, you can't just crash a regime and then leave, as this creates terrorist organizations and/or new dictators (Whoever has the most local power or thirst for power at the time). In for a penny, in for a pound."

Should we be "in for a pound" in Syria then?  

Wondering what the Kurds will do with 60,000 ISIS members and families when the Turks come calling.

(I'd at least make them PROMISE not to be bad again before letting them go.)

[Bengalzona]

(10-07-2019, 09:27 PM)Dill Wrote: LOL  I believe I did write that, but the auto-correct edited it out just as I posted.

Thanks 
 

Dagnabit!

Who at the NSA put that Nixon-era auto-correct back in service?!?!

[Dill]

A few more angles on Trump's Syrian decision:

1.  T. has two towers in Instanbul, which supposedly pull in a million a year for him. Apparently the possibility of a conflict of interest with Turkey and US policy was raised two years ago in the Atlantic.
https://www.inquisitr.com/5678900/donald-trump-tower-istanbul-turkey-documents/
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/trump-erdogan-conflict-of-interest/523485/

2. According to Gen. Barry McCaffrey on Brian Williams tonight, Trump is not only leaving the Kurds high and dry, but some 80 allies who were cobbled together by the previous administration, committed men and resources to the project, and now find themselves wondering what the hell to do. 80 nationally separate lines of confused, consternated communication are spiraling out from allied forces on the ground in Syria to their foreign offices back home--including our special ally Great Britain, who had no idea this coming.

3. Partly in response to 2, Congressional Republicans ARE protesting. Graham and McConnell even. Could this lever more Senators away from Trump, push them a degree closer to recognizing Trump's unfitness for office? I'm sure Graham will continue see no quid pro quo on the Ukrainian call, but he is very outspoken out this latest recklessness in Syrian policy. People on the Foreign Relations, intel and armed services committees have to see the unnecessary problems this decision makes, not to mention risks for the military.

As a corollary to 3, even if most Senators still see no wrong on Trimp's calls for Ukraine and China to investigate Biden, the Fox Audience/Trump base has to see all these otherwise Trump stalwarts complaining about the erratic, unprecedented and irresponsible PROCESS which is displayed in Syrian policy--for the second time in a year.  Jeezus Mattis and McGurk already resigned over a crazy policy 180 last December.

[NATI BENGALS]

Embarrassing and depressing. Sort of ironic. One of the serial sexual assaulter traitor conman's allies getting stabbed in the back by him. While the entire morally broken GOP get behind him after almost 3 full years of American destruction.